I'd just upgraded and sent my old parts to a friend who is currently out of work in Greece. Hi Miatakias

He NEEDED to upgrade and no-one I knew wanted the bits. So off they went.

He fitted them but after he installed his current GFX card drivers he got blank screen. Nothing we tried fixed it nor did any suggestions from these forums or others.

Then I stumbled on an official 5 month old thread on their site saying a fix is still weeks away.

Having 2 AMD 6970's on the go and a pair of replacements planned, I decided to send him one of my 6970's as well. For me it meant playing half speed for a while but at least I COULD play.

Loore had sent me a message and asked me about Miatakias' problem, I told him the above story and that the GFX card was going soon.

Miatakias was over the moon with the parts when we got them running and asked if I was going to buy GAS? if so he wanted to buy it for me as thank you for the parts I'd sent.

I contacted Loore later to let him know all was now ok with the PC and how Miatakias reacted, I got this back.

"Loore May 10

Tell him not to buy your copy, I've got it covered Consider it a reward for helping make the GRID community a better place."

Cool, a freebe for bein a nice guy and helping someone out

To my surprise, when Loore contacted me again. He supplied me with a passcode for the game plus the access to the press preview levels and cars we've seen in vids. Stroll on!

All hush, hush till now so here goes..

.

A week with Grid Autosport.

16 hours played and tested as I write this and upload some eyefinity vids.

1st off. The big one... The handling, Is it any good? Did they listen to all the whining we did?

Ooooohhh yes, it's good, VERY good, and yes again, they did listen to us fans of old and acted on it (or most of it so far?).

FINALLY! After years of waiting, we get a trueblooded, direct descendant of Grids epic gameplay.

Grippy cars on tarmac that you need to DRIVE to succeed. Slide any race car about like you had to in Grid 2 and you'll fail at the first corner.

Driving Autosport right on the limits of speed vs grip round Istanbul Park intermediate and the old grey matter started fizzing again, those Grid ingrained responses to what I was seeing on screen and feeling through the wheel took over and the Grin was back.

The assists are of the same style as Grid 1, where turning them off made every car soo much harder to control leading to slower lap times.

Paradoxically though turning off the assists in GAS lead to the opposite, better times than I got when they were on. I might have been fighting with the stability control instead of letting it do its job here.

Precise throttle control is critical for success but you reap the rewards for such restraint. so analogue controllers or wheels will do well, no idea regarding KB as I never had much in the way of KB skills to start with.

Bear in mind this is press preview and not full release. Only 4GBs it's just the core game elements I'm playing with. I'm playing on this lot.

So Here's some vids of the basic career modes, Most are in eyefinity taken using fraps and saved using windows live movie maker.

1st up, Touring cars Istanbul Park Intermediate.

The racing is just as much fun as the original Grid was for me. trading paint with a bit of shoulder barging here and there, got slapped by the corner cut system, so that works.

The "x5 race" option made for same fun racing over 15 or 20 laps but be warned, In 1 event I lead from pole and no contact with the AI cars, I lost 5th gear all the rest were fine this made the last 2 laps somewhat interesting.

Street Racing, Washington in the Mini Cooper S Works

Trying to get the "lift off" corners just right was soo much fun. as was trying to get clean passes.

I DID manage a complete race with no contact in this class but it was hard to get, you'll see why....

Drift Tuner, An essential for myself and a few others around here.

Ruined in Grid 2 with tea tray on ice handling, Drift's back to the circuits (or 1 at least in the preview) Tracks are split into "Score sectors" so no multilap chains of drifts scaring off all but the pro's.

Precise control inputs are a must here if you want to look like a pro

You can still hoon it like a BOSS with style and get points, I'm off for some much needed practice....;D

Open Wheel, Yas Marina (and dodgy cockpit view)

Slipstreaming is back just a shame the cockpit view looks like it's "unfinished" or an "afterthought" at best and so it's of no practical use to the headcam, hud off players.

The mirrors are like impresionist black and white paintings of the skyline behind you.

Like a tiny wee policeman pops up wherever you look saying "Nothing to see here, move along..." This has to be unfinished or the Modders got some work to do again....

Again though, it's only the press preview surely it'll be better for launch day

Endurance, be careful, this category bites.... No pit stops.

Tyre wear in Grid? HUH? Well much as I wouldn't have missed it, it does add a big tactical element to your driving. In an 8 minute race grip dissapears like an ice cube in a volcano, I kid you not.

1st try, I shot off into the blue, by the end of a lap I shredded 20% in less than 1:30 and had none for the end. You really neeed to nurse the tyres as on the 2nd try I used only 6% in one lap and still won the race albeit with 30 and 32% left of the rear tyres.

Pit stops would help here but it's about tyre management instead of outright speed.

As I said above it's the core of the game here and no where near complete, though with the way it handles, looks and plays right now I would be buying a copy without a shadow of a doubt.

Ferreted about in the mp section and found a few gems when looking at tracks,

Gemballa is an actual car manufacturer that manufacture custom cars based on Porsche platforms, similar to Ruf. They arent fake cars to begin with.

The reason why Codemaster isnt featuring Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche is due to licensing issues. Ferrari's license is either very expensive or lock to only Microsoft's platform. Lamborghini is known to have very expensive licensing that cost upwards of a million dollars, that might could be used to develop other parts of the game or bring other manufacturers. Porsche is mainly tied to EA since 10 years ago and other developers do no have access to that license these days.

Licensing isnt as easy as you think, it is a pretty damn complicated, fairly expensive or even a pain to get them. Even subbrands like Subaru's STi branding or Mercedes Benz's AMG branding needs to be licensed or even approved before a game developer can use them in a game. At the same time, some manufacturers also have many restrictions like they do not allow custom liveries on some cars or have limitation on how you ultilise their brands. For example, Audi's prestigious motorsports division, Audi Ultra who develop Audi race cars has a no custom livery policy that games cannot offer options for users to create custom liveries while a similar german brand like BMW does not have that restriction. Not to mention, licensing approvals can take a long time to get it done before you can start modelling the car in your game, that can be partly why Codemaster isnt revealing the full endurance car list as the licensing isnt finalised yet. I heard some manufacturers only approve their brands to be used in a game after a game gone gold. Car licensing is a mine field, IMO, which is not something that is easy to deal with.

Considering Autosports could obtain V8 Supercars, I think thats quite an achievement as Holden is also known to be quite pricey to license them in a game.

Back in the 90s, car manufacturers used to give out their license for free as they thought it was a good idea for other companies like game developers or merchandise manufacturer to advertise their cars. However, knowing how profitable is manufacturer licensing, car manufacturer started to charge companies to use their licenses which resulted what we have today. If I am not wrong, Ford bring in a couple of billion in revenue each year from car licensing in games to various merchandise such as model cars, polo Ts and cups. Its a profitable industry so they also want to make some money from it. On top of that, you get companies like EA and Microsoft signing exclusivity licensing that makes things even more complicated.

Source: I am a Project CARS backer. We go through similar issues daily.

Quite a teaser, Loore. I will never forget my earliest GRID experiences back in the summer of 2008. Had just started fooling around with racing games a few months before I got the GRID demo, and I was at first intimidated by the menus and interface, they were so unfamiliar in my limited experience with other games. Than came the demo's San Francisco race in the Mustang Concept GT-R and I was more deeply intimidated and fascinated. It was so utterly captivating to a new racer. I thought, what is this, I'll never be able to anything with this, this is way past my pay grade. But it was so beautiful I just had to keep coming back and finally started to acquire some degree of comfort. Then I bought the game (full price of course). Then I got to race at San Francisco again, and a whole bunch of other cool venues. GRID was not like any of the older racing games I had tried, and was far more addictive, entertaining and satisfying. It is still the racing game I go back to over and over again. And though I haven't played a demo of GRID: Autosport yet, I'm hoping Codies are going to extend that experience with the new title. It's sure looking good so far.

GRID and San Francisco. A match made in the U.K. Thanks Codies, for all the great times, past and present.

If you want serious, 'hardcore' racing with proper drivers, when in the world do you think going on the quick lobby is a good idea? There will always be the drivers who ram or whateva, so having a flashback to recover from the yobbos is incredibly useful, and removes a proportion of the pain of being rammed off. And it hardly encourages them to cause collisions. No flashbacks on F1, yet we still get plenty of imbeciles. Rammers will always ram.

Those complaining about flashbacks, obviously don't want to be rammed off. So you'd be better suited to being in your own custom lobby with your own rules and parameters, where yes, you can turn off flash backs. This sounds a heck of a lot more suitable for yourselves.

Jari-Mati Latvala - the one with deep mood swings, active on social media, a must follow

Crazy Leo - a phenomenon among rally drivers on Twitter, he's only just coming into WRC (DMack Fiesta Trophy) but he's amassed an impressive following! Very positive personality, passionate about rally

Craig Breen - a down to earth rally driver currently impressing in ERC with Peugeot, if you're a Brit you must follow Craig

I've been following tweets, hints, interviews and posts appearing from Codemasters on the next rally game. I wanted to put the information in one place so that we can all try reading too much into it all

It’s like the calm before the storm this week, developers are getting builds ready, the PR guys are preparing PR stuff and the Community Team are busy teasing something…

When I read the above I got very excited! The teaser next week may be for the next racing game (GRID TOCA?), F1 2014 (too early in the year IMO) or maybe just maybe the next rally game. Even a gaming site picked up this teasing paragraph

Very interesting insight into how Paul and Jon decided to compete as a team on rally stages. So now chief designer on the next rally game is an active co-driver and project manager is a rally driver? I'd say that's a pretty good set up for developing an authentic rally game

'so unbelievably stoked about the whole direction we're going in and the authenticity we've managed to get just from basically stripping back the system right down to its core; and starting building it back up piece by piece. It still feels like a great rally game, but it's so much more authentic in every way'